"So here's the last chorus of Plainsong," he said, feeling a sudden weariness. "Did they try to get her to talk?" He picked up the drugs box and shook it. "There's no sign of sodium pentathol or anything like that."

"You don't need that, "Agnes said, a little angry. "She'sjust an arthritic old lady with no training in how to resist. Fear's the best truth drug for people like her, and itcornescheap."

Maxim just nodded, reached across and lifted Mina 's hand gently away from her face. Her eyes opened with drugged slowness, then a sudden spasm of revulsion.

"It's all right, " he said soothingly. "We've come to take you back home. It's all over." He eased the other hand out from under her neck, so that he held each of them, stroking her knuckles reassuringly with his thumbs. "We'll get you back to the Dales. What was the name of the village?"

"Ramsley," Agnes said softly.

"Back to Ramsley. Just one thing: did they ask you questions?"

Mina moved her head fractionally.

"Did you tell them? Did you say you'd helped kill Brigitte Krone?"

"Harry," Agnes said warningly.

"We have to know what they know. Did you tell them?" He reached around and stroked the back of Mina 's neck, as if to soothe a knot of muscles under her back hair. Her eyes widened and she said faintly: "Yes. I did tell them."

"Fine. You told them you and Gustavhad killed Brigitte."

"Yes."

He put her hands back, but she took a moment to discover them, and rearrange herself in slow motion. Her eyes closed.

"I told you it was cheaper than drugs, " Agnes said in a bitter voice.

"She's lucky: I saw the last person Sims started questioning. I want to say something. "

But when they stepped down from the van, all he said was: "Did you bring out the radio?" and she showed it him, propped by the aerial against the barn. He put it on top of the van, for maximum range, then got a pair of handcuffs from the holdall and locked the two men together, wrist to wrist but around the front bumper of the Bedford so that they sprawled awkwardly on the grassy track ahead of it. But they said nothing, and neither did he or the watchful Blagg; it could have been standard moves in a game of chess where, Agnes recalled, you also stay silent and only win by the other side's mistake.

Blagg sat down against the barn, husbanding his strength. Maxim came back to Agnes.

"You were going to say something," she reminded him. "Or was that it?" (Why does this man always get me angry?)

"Yes. Mina – that isn't arthritis she's got. Not in her hands, anyway. The muscles in her left hand are flat, wasted, compared with the right."

"Arthritis was just what I heard. I'm not a doctor."

"No, you drive a car pretty well -" (now I remember why I get angry with this man, she thought) " – but you haven't spent six months in hospital or ten years married to an Army nurse. We got a lot of these cases, people applying for a disability award years after the event. A wound sort of hardens up and it can squeeze the nerves controlling a limb. They call it fibrositis when they can't think of a fancier name."

"So she's been wounded now, has she?"

Maxim glanced back, but Blagg was interested only in the two men and the radio. "Yes, high up in the neck, where the nerves for the hands come out. You can feel the scar. I think somebody tried operating there, too, probably when her hand started to go numb and seize up."

"All right, but what's this got to do with anything?"

"That was the wound the wife,Brigitte, wassupposed to have got in Dornhausen, back in '45."

"D'you mean this isn't his sister but hiswife?'

"Same person. He got his sister pregnant and married her to make it look better. There wouldn't be any problem – they were both using roadnames at the time. If that's the little secret he's been keeping all the time I'm not surprised how hard he's been working at it. "

"God Almighty."

"He's seen worse in His time. "

Chapter 27

Mina Linnarz-or Eismarkor Kroneor Schickert or her real name in the Dales – lay with her eyes half-closed under the dim light in the van, breathing with a slight rasp but steadily and deeply. The mousy sharpness of the little neat face was unfocused by wrinkles, the hair a thin grey tangle, no longer peroxided for a far more urgent reason than to look truly Aryan. Even if the American officer hadn't wax-pencilled out the young mother in the Dornhausen photograph, probably nobody could have recognised her now. And Gustavhad stifled even that chance by coming back to steal the photograph.

But no matter. There would be other proof- now they knew what to prove. There would be, in some other Standesamt, the real death certificate of the real Brigitte Krone to prove she died young and not in the parish where her birth certificate was filed. That – and her being an orphan – had been why the Communist underground had picked her to create a new Brigitte. Just as they had created a new Rainer Schickert from the real one whose birth and death certificates were also in different Standesamter. That was standard technique, just as uncovering it would be. No need for truth drugs.

(But what if Sims had found the time for truth drugs? Agnes smiled as she thought how eagerly Mina musthave confessed to the simple murder Sims's unit had invented for her and Gustav!)

Oh yes, we will prove it, Agnes thought. But we won't understand it. We shall never know what really happened. A brieflust, or compassion, or even real love between two parent-less children? Or just loneliness? God must forgive much that stems from that most terrible of all troubles. There lies a little old lady whose story I would rather understand than any other in all the computers and files of our registry. But now nobody will understand it, because even Mina and Gustavwill have lost the understanding under the fibrosis of shame and deceit.

The radio crackled faintly and Maxim grabbed for it. "Go. "

He thought he could hear Caswell muttering across a crackling infinity, but couldn't be sure.

"Jim, get out of there. Call me when you're clear of the docks."

The radio crackled back. Those things had very little power or range; even the Army's 350 set only went five kilometres reliably, and they must be that far from the docks at least.

Slowly and loudly, Maxim called:"Get – out – of- there -Call – when – you – are – dear."

"HEY YOU BREAKERS, ARE YOU PLAYING COPS AND ROBBERS OR SOMETHING? AND CAN ANYBODY JOIN IN?"

Whoever it was must have had an illegally long aerial wrapped around his car or truck, and probably an illegal booster as well. His contribution came through like the chimes of Big Ben.

It merely infuriated Maxim. It made Jim grab for theoff switch so suddenly – and he was using the radio right-handed, because of his stiff left elbow, which went against all his training – that he lost it. He had climbed onto a stack of timber some earlier ship had unloaded, perhaps eight feet high, and the walkie-talkie tumbled down the irregularly stacked planks like a staircase, lodged a few feet above the dock, and said: "DOES ANYBODY COPY?"

Caswell took out the revolver and began planning which way to move.

Maxim Came around the van. "What do we do with these two now? I want to get moving."

"I don't think it matters, not any more. They can go to East Germany or stay or whatever. Eismark isn't going to cook up any scandal about our people defecting, not once he knows we've got Plainsong. We just have to get that word to him."

"We can use the van radio. They're probably listening out at that end."

The Bedford's radio was a bigger affair, roughly built-in, and using the private military 30-70 megahertz band. So perhaps Sims had robbed the Secret Service stores after all.